Jay Eisenhart oral history transcript

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National Heritage Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oral History Program
Subject/USFW Retiree: Jay Eisenhart
Date: July 19, 2009
Interviewed by: Mark Madison
Mark Madison:
Well the first question we start with is the pronunciation and spelling of your name, that's an easy one.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yeah, Jay is easy! Eisenhart, like Eisenhower but its Eisenhart.
Mark Madison:
All right, and we are interviewing you outside Middlebourne, West Virginia. And the interviewer is Mark Madison and today is July 19, 2009. And thank you for agreeing to do this, we appreciate it.
Well let's start with your education, where did you go to school?
Jay Eisenhart:
I don't know whether you want it all or not, but anyways I went to, well we had 6th grade in a 2-room school and this is outside of Albany, New York. And after you got to 6th grade you had to go into the city, and so that was 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th that I went to Mill, and I went there for 6 years. I had the same teachers; I had the same homeroom teacher for 6 years. After that I went right out of that and went to Cornell for 4 years.
Mark Madison:
And what did you study at Cornell?
Jay Eisenhart:
Wildlife Management, I mean that was my major.
Mark Madison:
And then what did you do after you graduated from Cornell?
Jay Eisenhart:
I went to Alaska.
Mark Madison:
This is the good stuff? And what did you go to Alaska to do?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well I was not a person that would just go to Alaska and find a job, no. I had connections, and I had a summer job with the Fish and Wildlife Service and it was for the Rampart Dam Study because Senator Gruening wanted to dam the Yukon River. 2
Mark Madison:
Do you remember about what year this was Jay?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, 1960; I was 25 years old and I was raring to go, 25 years old live like I could do anything. And that's where I met Jim King right away, and for 4 summers I did the census Okay, they wanted to dam the Yukon River and that the Yukon Flats, that floods oh 300 miles or something like that up and down the Yukon River. And this is where ducks nest, millions of ducks or thousands of ducks, and so we did the census there. And so for 4 summers I worked there and Jim King was pretty much the boss, but then Cal Lensink; and maybe you know who he was...
Mark Madison:
Sure, very famous.
Jay Eisenhart:
And so we worked together, and then other college students, well it was 4 years of that. But what I did, okay so I did that for 3 months out of the year. But gee-whiz, come September boy I was on my own and I said, "Well I'm going to be a trapper because I know I could do it!" Or I said I could do it. And I got along very well with people in Beaver, that's where I stayed was in Beaver, which is on the Yukon River. And the first year I couldn't trap because I was not a resident, but I walked over that trap line and... Well there were these two old Sweden boys over there and they were retired, well they were old men, they were from Sweden and they called them the Sweden boys. But one was a Norwegian, Victor (unclear), and Victor told me, "You go out there and there's you a trap line right there, nobody but those Indians aren't going to, they won't know." Even then, in 1960, or '61 or '62, they won't know. And so I went in 1960, well it was '61. But I walked the whole trap line, they said, "There are 5 cabins out there, you can go right out and walk them. There's a 50 gallon lard can, you've got a little bit of rice, a little bit of flour, a little bit of a sugar, and there's a stove in every cabin, and you can do it." And so I made a little toboggan about 5 feet long and I pulled it across the river and I went, and then I came back to Beaver. This was in the spring of the year, in March and April...
Mark Madison:
What were you trapping?
Jay Eisenhart:
I didn't trap then, I'm telling you this is the first year and I wasn't a resident and I couldn't trap, but I wanted to investigate. And I did, I walked all the way up to the fifth cabin, and then there's Mount Schwatka up there, and that's in the White Mountains, that's between the Yukon and Fairbanks. And I said, "I'm going to climb it, I'm going to climb it!" And I did, and I went up there and up on the top of that mountain. Somebody had been there, some surveyor. There's the Victoria Mountain and there's Mount Schwatka, between the Yukon River and Fairbanks, the Victoria is higher but Mount Tuwaka in a haystack is like this; Victoria Mountain is rounder. I climbed it and up there there were all of these 3
wires sticking around there where somebody had a little think like that, and I said (unclear) I don't know when, sometime. But I was smart, I took a little bottle with me, a little mayonnaise jar, so I wrote a note in it and I made a beacon, I made a little pile of rocks and I put it in there saying I'd been there.
Well now you're not the one but Roger Kaye, do you know him?
Mark Madison:
I know Roger well, yes...
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, because he was up there at the last cabin hunting sheep and doing stuff like that. But anyway, I did, I climbed that mountain? What else did I do... The next year I was a trapper, yes sir.
Mark Madison:
And what were you trapping that second year?
Jay Eisenhart:
When white men gets the fever he kills whatever he can kill, and not people of course! Game laws, forget about them!
Mark Madison: So you trapped anything?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well you did because nobody cared, nobody cared. The only thing was beaver because you had to tag them, you had to tag beaver. You could catch, I don't know, I think it was 20 and then it went up to 25, or it was 25 and then down to 20. Yeah mink, well mink and martin that was the main thing in the wintertime. See trapping season... Well my birthday is October 25th, and I think well you, you get freeze up. The Yukon River doesn't freeze until Election Day, but I was on the other side of the Yukon River. I was over on Beaver River and October 25th pretty much you need to get going, and I would try and get going. And that's when you want to catch martins because that's when their fur is nice and they run around early. So its martin and mink, that's your moneymaker. You catch a fox here and there. I was there for 19 years and I caught about 6 wolves, and you're never going to make money on a wolf but it's a big deal that you get a wolf, oh you got something! And the same thing with a wolverine; yeah you catch a wolverine sometimes. And then you get to Christmas time and then well that's about the end of winter trapping. And the first of February, well then you can catch beaver but it's a too cold, it so cold I cut a whole in the ice and it was like 4-feet thick and everything. But I'd stay in beaver for a week or so, and then go back and then get some beaver, and I'd get 20 beaver or whatever it was. And then ratting time, then ratting time, boy oh boy, then the sun is starting to shine and you'd go out and you'd catch them with traps! They'd put up these push ups on the ice and I had some good dogs and I'd say, "Gee" and they'd get the idea and yeah, head for that ratting house over there and oh, go for that one and go for 4
that one! I'd go around and plug the holes on them and take the shovel with me and jam the hole on that rat house and sit back in there and... Well that was difference with a rat; when you're trapping rats you had to go everyday. When I was catching those martins and I would make that trip, when I'd head for the home cabin that was 5 cabins in a row, it would take me I just said 17 days; it would take 2-1/2 weeks to go from one end of the trap line and back to the other end, and that's what it was. But those martins would freeze, you'd catch them and their dead in about a couple of hours or something, but that's the way it was. But with a rat trap you had to go every day, well you want to get the lot of them. I had one year, because I shot a lot of rats, but first you catch them in the trap, and when you catch them in the trap you eat them, but you can't them all because there are so many of them. And they're so good, you'd stick them in the oven and you'd roast them. It's just like a piece of pork, they're greasy all over and oh my, they're pretty good! And then after that when you can't... Well all of the push-offs fall in because it's warm in May, and then you walk along on the ice and you shoot them but... Well when you start shooting them, you get holes in them and they're no so good. And then after awhile, when you've got a lot of them, you've got a lot in the canoe and you're shooting (unclear). That's all there's to it, there's good ones and bad ones. But see when I talked this way... See my sister, I have a sister, she's just a couple of years younger than me, she was a librarian and she worked in Ketchikan mostly, but as a librarian in the school, and she would have her summers off and so she would come up. And I would talk to her like this and she said, "Jay you don't say January, you don't say February, you don't say April. You would say it's break off time, it's goose season, it's ratting time, it's King Salmon time, it's silver time..."
Mark Madison:
You have a different calendar.
Jay Eisenhart:
"It's moose hunting time, its wintertime trapping." And that's the way it went.
Mark Madison:
And you did that for 19 years?
Jay Eisenhart: Yes. That's the way people thought, and it's so different now, I know it is. When I went up there nobody had a chainsaw, nobody had a snow machine. Everybody lived in a log cabin and everybody had five or six dogs tied up, and they had some kind of a... They were some out on rinky dink sleds but they'd get out and get a load of wood. This is what they knew how to do and this is what they could do. But since then by the time I left there wasn't a dog damned there! And what with the welfare and that business; that's the first they did was they brought out, they had some of these things like those 4-wheelers so they could run around in the summertime, run around. And then of course they wanted a snowmobile so they could go out on the trap line, well all right (unclear). But boy you drive that thing into overflow; I don't if you know what overflow is, but if you get water underneath the snow. If you've got a dog that dog knows it, he says, "I don't want to get in that stuff!" And if you do get in it the dog would say, "I'm going to get out 5
of here, I'm going to get out!" And if you drove a 4-wheeler in there and it's 30-below or something like that and all of the small metal parts on it are 30-below, and as soon as you hit that water you're going to get stuck, it won't go anyplace. But that's what Beaver is now. Well they've all got telephones now, and I talk to them.
Mark Madison:
You mentioned muskrat hunting and so on; we have one of Cal Lensink's rat canoes in our museum, actually Alaska sent it down. Where did you learn to do all of this? You did learn how to handle a sled in Albany probably, did you just learn from the people up in Alaska?
Jay Eisenhart: Well it's hard to explain it; but I can't tell you about my father, I can't tell you about my uncles and aunts and everything. But I could adapt, that's all there is to it, I'd just say okay. When I was in high school kid right there around Albany and I could catch some opossums and muskrats, and there were red foxes there and I could catch them right there amongst all of the farms and stuff, and I just knew I could do it. And my father was a bird hunter, he was good with a shotgun, and he didn't care a thing about deer or anything like that, he didn't have a rifle. And I'd get out there and I just said, "Well gee whiz, I can to." There's a thing that... Somebody, Moses Cruickshank, and somebody recorded what he wrote, and whether you've ever gotten that I don't know. But Moses said to me, it was just about when I was going to leave, he said, "You're the last white trapper." And a white trapper, and some of them --- well I mentioned the Sweden boys, okay one's Norwegian and one's Swedish, but jeeze that was a Fin up there and there was French Jim, and there was (unclear), well he was a Fin. But there were white people up then in the 1920's when things were hard, and there were single white men, they would come in and they would take a couple of looks at what the Indians were doing and they'd say, "Well I believe I can do this." And they'd outdo the Indians. And I didn't say then, and maybe I, I don't know whether I ever said before I came back here, but I can outdo these guys. But they had all of the experience, they knew it, but they had a wife and five kids, I didn't. And the white trappers didn't have it and the white people came in and put steamboats to work. It was before my time because the steamboats were burning oil when I got up there. I just said, "Yeah, I can do it," and I did it. And then after 19 years I said, "Well, okay I've got this nice fish camp up here." "And I've got, oh gee whiz, I built that home cabin two or three times and I've got six line cabins, big cabins up there. What's left? What are you going to do? Are you going to just stay on here and go to the pioneer's home?" And the other thing is right in Beaver, right in town there; there was a time when... Oh gee whiz, I don't know when this was, in the middle of the '70s, "Red Power! Red Power!" These young kids were growing up and geeze by then now I'm 40 years old or something, and these kids boy I watched them when they were born or something like that, "Red Power! Red Power! Let's kill the white men!" There I was one day, they were doing that and I was walking up, I did, "How about right now." And they kept walking. But it was getting that way because there were murders there, that they would just... A little bit of this, this is homemade wine, I'm drinking homemade wine but they couldn't take it. Whatever it is about Indians, they can't take booze. I saw it, and I know it and they can't. And it would happen, it would happen very easily. Well, that 6
was part of it, and I said there's nothing more to do and things are just getting worse and worse. It was very nice in 1960 when I went there, and 19 years later it wasn't. The young men were not saying, "I can do better than my grandfather." Or, "I can do just as good as my uncle did." They didn't say that. They said, "Gee whiz, Uncle Sam's out there, he's going to take care of all of us Indians."
Mark Madison:
So where did you go after Alaska?
Jay Eisenhart:
After?
Mark Madison:
After you left Beaver? Did you come here?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, I've been here, it will be 30 years on the first of September. Yes I've been here, I came right down here.
Mark Madison:
And what did you do here in West Virginia?
Jay Eisenhart:
I said, "I'm going to do what the old-timers did, right here." The same thing I said in Alaska!
Mark Madison:
Another great frontier!
Jay Eisenhart:
And I had 2 ponies, and then I had 2 more ponies, and then I had mules. I had cornfields all up there, right up here where's he's got all of that, I plowed up all of his yard, I plowed it all up, I plowed it all up. But it was a little big different, in Beaver the Indians they said, "Yes, gee." They sort of liked it. But when I got here and started doing that stuff with the mules people laughed at me. Not in my face but they said, "Gee whiz, what kind of jerk?" I said, "Well, I'm going to do it, I don't care. Yeah, I was born in New York, well I was born in Connecticut but I claim New York..." And people can, well people can if they're raised right. And I was raised right, I had a good father and I had good aunts and uncles and I had a good mother and a good sister. And yes, people can do that, and people still do it in China and they do it in India. Africa, nope I have no use for those Africans, they can't. But you can get an Indian that just is as black as you ever saw, and he can go out there. And there are people that are doing that, and they're... Gee whiz, this is not what you want.
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Mark Madison:
But I do have a few questions; do you have any memories from those first 4 years when you were doing the bird banding? What the techniques were like? What actually the day-to-day involved? I know it was a long time ago...
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, Cal Lensink organized the thing, and he draw out all of the Yukon Flats and he drew all of these little squares. And the first way he drew them was that there were 4-square miles, and so Jim came in the summer and all the residents were there, but they would land us out in a float plane. But 4-square miles was too much, but we did that for the first year, and then after he cut them down to 1-square, which we could cover. And so we would fly out, and sometimes there would be two of us in a square mile and sometimes there would be one in 1-square mile and the other one over 3 miles. And we would just have, well we had a rat canoe (unclear), and so this little thing where you can paddle around and portage it. You can carry it; the thing weighs 30 pounds or 35 pounds. So that's what we had, we had (unclear) and a little paper to write down on, a little coffee and a sandwich or something if you wanted it, then we'd sit around and wait. And we'd go back to Fort Yukon, that's where we worked out of, Fort Yukon. And that's what we were doing; Cal did all of the figuring out of what we saw.
Mark Madison:
Did it help stop the dam? You said at the beginning you were doing this because of the dam proposal?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, there were a lot of reasons to stop the dam; there's was a lot more than that. (Unclear) Bob Bartlett was the other one, but Groening was the one that wanted the dam and Egan was the governor. No the dam wasn't popular.
Mark Madison:
What about Roger Kaye, when you first met him he was hunting out there?
Jay Eisenhart:
I never met him.
Mark Madison:
Oh okay, but his name came up earlier in your oral history. He was there before you was he?
Jay Eisenhart:
I'm 73 years old, and not many people were there before I was, he's not one of them. No, he wrote me a letter, and somehow or other, because that letter he wrote to my sister, I have a sister in Vermont. And Ron Inouye, now does that mean anything to you?
Mark Madison:
No. 8
Jay Eisenhart:
Well he's Japanese, and he was in Fairbanks and he was one (unclear)... too long of a story. But anyways, somehow or other Roger Kaye, I don't know if he's a politician or just a writer, a newspaper writer, but he found out that Inouye knew my sister. Well anyway, he wrote a letter to my sister and she forwarded it to me, and then I found out that Roger Kaye had been out on my trap lines somehow or other.
Mark Madison:
I see, yeah, later on.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but then he ran into trouble. He was out; those Swede boys that I'd talked about, Victor Innolov, because the whole trap line was abandoned after I left my part of it. But I didn't have their home cabin, which was up above where I was, and that was abandoned. And Roger Kaye, well he landed an airplane... But anyways, he used it and he trapped, which was all right because I talked to him on the telephone and I said, "What about the Indians?" Because the Indians in Beaver, they have that whole trapping line. He said, "Well it wasn't on there." And I said, "Well yeah, okay." But anyways, he used that cabin and he left some grub there, he left some traps and stuff there. And then it turned out a couple of Indian boys from Beaver got over there and they took all his stuff from there! And then when I talked to him I said, "Well who was it?" And he said, "That was Sammy Blackitt and the other one." I didn't know who the other one was but I knew Sam Blackitt, I knew who that was, but this Indians kids. And so they went over in their snowmobiles and so they'd catch a few beavers or something, and whatever anybody leaves there they'd take it. And that's about what I know about Roger Kaye. Well he was, he was up, he'd fly a plane up there around my fourth and fifth cabin up there. That was his sheep hunting areas, he was up in those White Mountains there, he was sheep hunting. And he could see the cabin, because there's a plane... When I was there trapping (unclear) sideline because there's a couple of lakes down there that are pretty close to the mountains, and people would land there and they would set up a camp and then they'd walk up to the mountains. So he landed there and he saw my cabin and then he went over there, and I'd left a note in it and I said, "I'm quitting this trap line, I'm never coming back." And so he saw that and so then he got my name and knew who I was and all of that; there's one connection right there. He was sheep hunting, but I killed some sheep up there. From Beaver right on the Yukon River, when I went up the following year okay I'd go 19 miles downstream in a big boat which I built, I had a 35-foot boat, I traveled down with 5 dogs or 6 dogs and a corn mill and everything. I'd go 19 miles downstream and 50 miles upstream and had my own cabin, and then I had 5 cabins in a row. And it was about 40 miles from the first cabin to the second, third, fourth, fifth it was about 40 miles, so I had to go 40 miles, and I'm setting the traps, this is my business. But if I had to get up there right in the first week of November it was nice weather, and I'd say, "Well, I'm going to go off and see if I can see sheep." Because the Swede boys told me there's sheep out there and nobody in Beaver, they didn't know what sheep were, they didn't know what they were. And so I went out, after I'd been traveling for 5 years or something like that because I couldn't go all the time, sometimes it would be snowy and 9
windy and you can't get up there. I'd get there to the cabin but I couldn't get up on there. As soon as I saw one, boy there's a big ram up there! But it was in the afternoon and I couldn't get up there and said, "Well I'll go tomorrow morning." I went up there tomorrow morning, he was right there and I shot him!
Mark Madison:
He was waiting for you!
Jay Eisenhart:
And he didn't roll the other way, he didn't go towards Fairbanks, he went my way. And I got him, and oh my, that meat was just so good. This was in November, they try to hunt them in August or something when they fly in and walk in. But then I was doing it the hard way.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, in November.
Jay Eisenhart:
And I got that guy. And then... I don't know what I killed, maybe 3 or 4 in 19 years. One year I went up, well it was just a nice day, it was in January, there were a bunch of ewes and fawn kids, and I shot one of those ewes. The meat was no good at all; it was no good at all. You've got to get anything, whatever it is, a bull moose, if you kill a bull moose he's fine, if you kill him in October you don't want to eat him.
Mark Madison:
In those early days when you went up there, in the early 60's, how did the people feel about the Fish and Wildlife Service? Did they like the agency or not like it or didn't care?
Jay Eisenhart:
They were a little bit worried about me but it didn't take long, it didn't take long. I wore glasses and I was a little guy, someone called me the little schoolteacher. No, it didn't take long at all that they were perfectly reassured that I was doing just what they were doing, and we'd all talk about, you know, "Is there any rats around or...?" Gee whiz, in the first of May oh, "Who sees a goose, who's going to shoot the first goose?" Because we're all going, "We're going to be after them?" That's all there was to it. No, there was no problem there. And Jim King, they liked Jim King, he was a good guy. And a bunch of the rest of them there, they were good guys. I was up there when, well when they went up there to Point Barrow, well they went up there because everybody was shooting eider ducks and so they asked them what was all about the eiders ducks, "I don't care, what are you going to do."
Mark Madison:
What did they do?
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Jay Eisenhart:
They had backbone; they weren't killing off the eider ducks. There were laws that were written; they're supposed to fit everybody. There's a law out there when; okay you said you came over on I-what?
Mark Madison: I-70.
Jay Eisenhart:
You came out on I-70; did you ever drive 70 miles an hour on it?
Mark Madison:
Quite a bit!
Jay Eisenhart:
When they said 65? Well, that's the way things are because you have to say, "I know what I'm doing." But you don't drive 65 miles an hour in (unclear). Well that's the same thing with any law; it's pretty hard to make one that fits everybody.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, good point, good point.
Jay Eisenhart:
But I've said it before, I didn't care about the game law, the only thing I did was beaver, when you can... There was a limit on beaver. So I didn't trap 21 when you can only check in 20 because you had to check them.
Mark Madison:
But the other stuff there was no laws on it or they just didn't check on the background?
Jay Eisenhart:
They didn't, it made no sense, it made no sense. These were people that (unclear) deer all winter long. Well the first thing was the crane, the crane came over and everybody was after them, little kids, women, everybody, I mean there's a honker, there's a honker! And after that, the same thing with the fish, now there are all kinds of laws on those salmon. Gee whiz, the Fourth of July and everybody was trying to catch a king salmon, who was going to get the first one! Now what it is you have to pull your nets out on Tuesday and Wednesday, well gee you can catch them Thursday and Friday --- some stupid stuff like that.
Mark Madison:
Well Jay, you gave us a real sense of what it was like in the old days. Is there anything, I know you said you took some notes, was there anything that you didn't get to cover that was in your notes that you want to discuss?
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Jay Eisenhart:
Yeah, everything on here!
Mark Madison:
Well what else?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well I don't know what you want.
Mark Madison:
I just want to hear what it was like the old days and any recollections you have old.
Jay Eisenhart:
The thing I wrote on top of this is I heard of Sarah Palin the same day you did.
Mark Madison:
All right, yes.
Jay Eisenhart:
Well somebody asked me the other day, they said, "Do you know Sarah Palin?"
Mark Madison:
You were out of the state before she was probably born.
Jay Eisenhart:
No I don't know her!
Mark Madison:
What other notes do you've got jotted down there?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well maybe... Well I can't show you this but Johnny Sand now he was an Indian and, I don't know what we got talking about... make a rabbit skin blanket. And he told me... Well there were a lot of rabbits, some years there was a lot of rabbits when there's a lot of lynx and stuff. Well he taught me how to... Well, what I did, you'd get the rabbit and you'd skin them, everything comes off like a sock and then you'd cut off the back leg or something, but anyways, you'd cut one around with a sharp knife until you get a string. Do you see what I'm talking about? You'd go around and around until you hit the cranium, maybe 7 or 8 feet long, and then you'd just wrap it around a stick. And then you get another one, another one, another one and pretty soon you get your stick it's all full of them. Well then you start, well it's just like an endless chain, you do this and you pull it out and then you go back in here and you pull it out. So you get this endless chain and then you go back through every time you back through until you have something.
Mark Madison:
And that's how you make a rabbit blanket. 12
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, so I made one and then I made another one. And after awhile... You ever hear of Barnett Castle? Is she dead now?
Mark Madison:
Yes; I think she has passed on, yeah.
Jay Eisenhart:
Well she was at the University of Alaska. Geeze, I got to know these people and she'd said, "How do you make a rabbit skin blanket?" And I told her, and she said write it out, write it out on a piece of paper and so I did that. Well another time I was talking to her and I asked her, I said, "Barnett, do the moose chew cud?" And she said, "I don't know." Nobody ever saw them chew their cud. And so then I got her to (unclear).... Gee, the moose they must chew their cud. I know what's in their stomach; (unclear). Well that was something else about Barnett Castle. But anyway, when I left I had those two rabbit blankets which were 10 x 10 or something, big things like that. John Sand, he's the one who told me how to make them, he said, "Don't make them too tight, don't make like those looped things like this, think like this." And then he said how his mother or grandmother or something made him a suit when he was a little kid.
Mark Madison:
Out of rabbit?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but they'd just do these endless chains, and I didn't do it. But you could, all you have to do is weave in, you can make a little arm or a leg, it's just so rough, rough going. He said yeah, he had a little suit, boy you could picture it because there's holes, there's holes in it! Well when I'd sleep on it boy you could stick your toes right up it, there the warmest things. Well anyways, when I left I knew I had something and one of them is in Fairbanks in the university there and the other one is in Juneau, and I sold one of them for $900.00 and other one for $1000.00, and I wrote that thing. But people won't do that, and here I'm this white guy going gee whiz, I came from Albany, New York.
Mark Madison:
And you're making a rabbit blanket.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but I was doing what French Jim did and Ed Berg and all of those white men, they came up and did that. But now I couldn't do that anymore. When that land claims, Native Land Claims Settlement Act came out, and I was on Beaver's property when they had (unclear)... and I could have stayed there but the time where it had just run out, there wasn't any good anymore. And I was 45 years old and said, "Well gee whiz, 45 that's just like 25." It was not like 73, no not anymore! No, I'm not doing anymore.
13
Jay Eisenhart:
Well you can walk around in the house; well you can't take pictures.... I don't care you can or not but...
Mark Madison:
Do you want me to? Is it okay if I take pictures?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, if you arrange it.
Tour of house...
Mark Madison:
Let me zoom on this, so this made out of a sheep horn?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes.
Mark Madison:
Wow! It looks like a big sheep, was it a decent sized one?
Jay Eisenhart:
It's supposed to be a 3/4 horn but it was 3/4, but I don't care!
Mark Madison:
Was it hard to carve?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, you had to start out with a hatchet and start chopping, but then you keep putting in boiling water, you keep putting into boiling water and then you can carve a little bit. Well this is the tip of the horn and this is the big part of it, but it's all carved out so it's this way, and this is all down here. And then (unclear) after you get it all made, you get it all made, you turn it inside out. Right on your knees, well it goes this way but you turn it outside out. It's all soft; every time you put it in boiling water it's soft. And so I made it.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, that is neat.
Jay Eisenhart:
When I made the arm, it was old Ida En was over there, she was an Eskimo, she wanted it so bad! I said I may wait another year, I'll make another one, I'll make another one. But they didn't do that stuff, they won't do that, and it's just white men.
Jay Eisenhart:
Have you seen a moose skin; well it's like (unclear), you can chop them down the middle and there you've got that, that's hard as a rock and that what you clean the moose skin, 14
clean a mink or anything else. That and a crooked knife, and you can't exist up there without a crooked knife. This is what you carve stuff with, a little (unclear), making canoe panel, and oh I've got a canoe panel but you ain't going to see it! And this one, people always used to make it out of wood. And I said, "I'm going to..." This is the same thing as this one.
Mark Madison:
What's this?
Jay Eisenhart:
That's bone, that's bone. Now that takes a little bit of drilling and a little bit of carving, a little bit of time and a little bit of.... I hate to keep saying it, but white man!
Mark Madison:
That is neat.
Mark Madison:
That's for mending a net; do you know what I'm talking about?
Mark Madison:
Yep, yep, that's really interesting. That's great stuff!
Unverified: Mill (High School) (pg 1); Victor Innolov (pg 8); Sammy Blackitt (pg 8); John Sand (pg 11), Barnett Castle (pg 11), Ida En (pg 13)
Key Words: Jay Eisenhart, Mark Madison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska, 1960 Rampart Dam Study, Senator Gruening, Yukon River, Yukon Flats, Jim King, Cal Lensink, trapping, Beaver, AK, Roger Kaye, Mount Schwatka, White Mountains, Victoria Mountains, Moses Cruickshank, Fort Yukon, Bob Bartlett, Governor Bill Egan, Ronald Inouye, eider duck, Native Land Claims Settlement Act,

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1
National Heritage Team of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Oral History Program
Subject/USFW Retiree: Jay Eisenhart
Date: July 19, 2009
Interviewed by: Mark Madison
Mark Madison:
Well the first question we start with is the pronunciation and spelling of your name, that's an easy one.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yeah, Jay is easy! Eisenhart, like Eisenhower but its Eisenhart.
Mark Madison:
All right, and we are interviewing you outside Middlebourne, West Virginia. And the interviewer is Mark Madison and today is July 19, 2009. And thank you for agreeing to do this, we appreciate it.
Well let's start with your education, where did you go to school?
Jay Eisenhart:
I don't know whether you want it all or not, but anyways I went to, well we had 6th grade in a 2-room school and this is outside of Albany, New York. And after you got to 6th grade you had to go into the city, and so that was 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th that I went to Mill, and I went there for 6 years. I had the same teachers; I had the same homeroom teacher for 6 years. After that I went right out of that and went to Cornell for 4 years.
Mark Madison:
And what did you study at Cornell?
Jay Eisenhart:
Wildlife Management, I mean that was my major.
Mark Madison:
And then what did you do after you graduated from Cornell?
Jay Eisenhart:
I went to Alaska.
Mark Madison:
This is the good stuff? And what did you go to Alaska to do?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well I was not a person that would just go to Alaska and find a job, no. I had connections, and I had a summer job with the Fish and Wildlife Service and it was for the Rampart Dam Study because Senator Gruening wanted to dam the Yukon River. 2
Mark Madison:
Do you remember about what year this was Jay?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, 1960; I was 25 years old and I was raring to go, 25 years old live like I could do anything. And that's where I met Jim King right away, and for 4 summers I did the census Okay, they wanted to dam the Yukon River and that the Yukon Flats, that floods oh 300 miles or something like that up and down the Yukon River. And this is where ducks nest, millions of ducks or thousands of ducks, and so we did the census there. And so for 4 summers I worked there and Jim King was pretty much the boss, but then Cal Lensink; and maybe you know who he was...
Mark Madison:
Sure, very famous.
Jay Eisenhart:
And so we worked together, and then other college students, well it was 4 years of that. But what I did, okay so I did that for 3 months out of the year. But gee-whiz, come September boy I was on my own and I said, "Well I'm going to be a trapper because I know I could do it!" Or I said I could do it. And I got along very well with people in Beaver, that's where I stayed was in Beaver, which is on the Yukon River. And the first year I couldn't trap because I was not a resident, but I walked over that trap line and... Well there were these two old Sweden boys over there and they were retired, well they were old men, they were from Sweden and they called them the Sweden boys. But one was a Norwegian, Victor (unclear), and Victor told me, "You go out there and there's you a trap line right there, nobody but those Indians aren't going to, they won't know." Even then, in 1960, or '61 or '62, they won't know. And so I went in 1960, well it was '61. But I walked the whole trap line, they said, "There are 5 cabins out there, you can go right out and walk them. There's a 50 gallon lard can, you've got a little bit of rice, a little bit of flour, a little bit of a sugar, and there's a stove in every cabin, and you can do it." And so I made a little toboggan about 5 feet long and I pulled it across the river and I went, and then I came back to Beaver. This was in the spring of the year, in March and April...
Mark Madison:
What were you trapping?
Jay Eisenhart:
I didn't trap then, I'm telling you this is the first year and I wasn't a resident and I couldn't trap, but I wanted to investigate. And I did, I walked all the way up to the fifth cabin, and then there's Mount Schwatka up there, and that's in the White Mountains, that's between the Yukon and Fairbanks. And I said, "I'm going to climb it, I'm going to climb it!" And I did, and I went up there and up on the top of that mountain. Somebody had been there, some surveyor. There's the Victoria Mountain and there's Mount Schwatka, between the Yukon River and Fairbanks, the Victoria is higher but Mount Tuwaka in a haystack is like this; Victoria Mountain is rounder. I climbed it and up there there were all of these 3
wires sticking around there where somebody had a little think like that, and I said (unclear) I don't know when, sometime. But I was smart, I took a little bottle with me, a little mayonnaise jar, so I wrote a note in it and I made a beacon, I made a little pile of rocks and I put it in there saying I'd been there.
Well now you're not the one but Roger Kaye, do you know him?
Mark Madison:
I know Roger well, yes...
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, because he was up there at the last cabin hunting sheep and doing stuff like that. But anyway, I did, I climbed that mountain? What else did I do... The next year I was a trapper, yes sir.
Mark Madison:
And what were you trapping that second year?
Jay Eisenhart:
When white men gets the fever he kills whatever he can kill, and not people of course! Game laws, forget about them!
Mark Madison: So you trapped anything?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well you did because nobody cared, nobody cared. The only thing was beaver because you had to tag them, you had to tag beaver. You could catch, I don't know, I think it was 20 and then it went up to 25, or it was 25 and then down to 20. Yeah mink, well mink and martin that was the main thing in the wintertime. See trapping season... Well my birthday is October 25th, and I think well you, you get freeze up. The Yukon River doesn't freeze until Election Day, but I was on the other side of the Yukon River. I was over on Beaver River and October 25th pretty much you need to get going, and I would try and get going. And that's when you want to catch martins because that's when their fur is nice and they run around early. So its martin and mink, that's your moneymaker. You catch a fox here and there. I was there for 19 years and I caught about 6 wolves, and you're never going to make money on a wolf but it's a big deal that you get a wolf, oh you got something! And the same thing with a wolverine; yeah you catch a wolverine sometimes. And then you get to Christmas time and then well that's about the end of winter trapping. And the first of February, well then you can catch beaver but it's a too cold, it so cold I cut a whole in the ice and it was like 4-feet thick and everything. But I'd stay in beaver for a week or so, and then go back and then get some beaver, and I'd get 20 beaver or whatever it was. And then ratting time, then ratting time, boy oh boy, then the sun is starting to shine and you'd go out and you'd catch them with traps! They'd put up these push ups on the ice and I had some good dogs and I'd say, "Gee" and they'd get the idea and yeah, head for that ratting house over there and oh, go for that one and go for 4
that one! I'd go around and plug the holes on them and take the shovel with me and jam the hole on that rat house and sit back in there and... Well that was difference with a rat; when you're trapping rats you had to go everyday. When I was catching those martins and I would make that trip, when I'd head for the home cabin that was 5 cabins in a row, it would take me I just said 17 days; it would take 2-1/2 weeks to go from one end of the trap line and back to the other end, and that's what it was. But those martins would freeze, you'd catch them and their dead in about a couple of hours or something, but that's the way it was. But with a rat trap you had to go every day, well you want to get the lot of them. I had one year, because I shot a lot of rats, but first you catch them in the trap, and when you catch them in the trap you eat them, but you can't them all because there are so many of them. And they're so good, you'd stick them in the oven and you'd roast them. It's just like a piece of pork, they're greasy all over and oh my, they're pretty good! And then after that when you can't... Well all of the push-offs fall in because it's warm in May, and then you walk along on the ice and you shoot them but... Well when you start shooting them, you get holes in them and they're no so good. And then after awhile, when you've got a lot of them, you've got a lot in the canoe and you're shooting (unclear). That's all there's to it, there's good ones and bad ones. But see when I talked this way... See my sister, I have a sister, she's just a couple of years younger than me, she was a librarian and she worked in Ketchikan mostly, but as a librarian in the school, and she would have her summers off and so she would come up. And I would talk to her like this and she said, "Jay you don't say January, you don't say February, you don't say April. You would say it's break off time, it's goose season, it's ratting time, it's King Salmon time, it's silver time..."
Mark Madison:
You have a different calendar.
Jay Eisenhart:
"It's moose hunting time, its wintertime trapping." And that's the way it went.
Mark Madison:
And you did that for 19 years?
Jay Eisenhart: Yes. That's the way people thought, and it's so different now, I know it is. When I went up there nobody had a chainsaw, nobody had a snow machine. Everybody lived in a log cabin and everybody had five or six dogs tied up, and they had some kind of a... They were some out on rinky dink sleds but they'd get out and get a load of wood. This is what they knew how to do and this is what they could do. But since then by the time I left there wasn't a dog damned there! And what with the welfare and that business; that's the first they did was they brought out, they had some of these things like those 4-wheelers so they could run around in the summertime, run around. And then of course they wanted a snowmobile so they could go out on the trap line, well all right (unclear). But boy you drive that thing into overflow; I don't if you know what overflow is, but if you get water underneath the snow. If you've got a dog that dog knows it, he says, "I don't want to get in that stuff!" And if you do get in it the dog would say, "I'm going to get out 5
of here, I'm going to get out!" And if you drove a 4-wheeler in there and it's 30-below or something like that and all of the small metal parts on it are 30-below, and as soon as you hit that water you're going to get stuck, it won't go anyplace. But that's what Beaver is now. Well they've all got telephones now, and I talk to them.
Mark Madison:
You mentioned muskrat hunting and so on; we have one of Cal Lensink's rat canoes in our museum, actually Alaska sent it down. Where did you learn to do all of this? You did learn how to handle a sled in Albany probably, did you just learn from the people up in Alaska?
Jay Eisenhart: Well it's hard to explain it; but I can't tell you about my father, I can't tell you about my uncles and aunts and everything. But I could adapt, that's all there is to it, I'd just say okay. When I was in high school kid right there around Albany and I could catch some opossums and muskrats, and there were red foxes there and I could catch them right there amongst all of the farms and stuff, and I just knew I could do it. And my father was a bird hunter, he was good with a shotgun, and he didn't care a thing about deer or anything like that, he didn't have a rifle. And I'd get out there and I just said, "Well gee whiz, I can to." There's a thing that... Somebody, Moses Cruickshank, and somebody recorded what he wrote, and whether you've ever gotten that I don't know. But Moses said to me, it was just about when I was going to leave, he said, "You're the last white trapper." And a white trapper, and some of them --- well I mentioned the Sweden boys, okay one's Norwegian and one's Swedish, but jeeze that was a Fin up there and there was French Jim, and there was (unclear), well he was a Fin. But there were white people up then in the 1920's when things were hard, and there were single white men, they would come in and they would take a couple of looks at what the Indians were doing and they'd say, "Well I believe I can do this." And they'd outdo the Indians. And I didn't say then, and maybe I, I don't know whether I ever said before I came back here, but I can outdo these guys. But they had all of the experience, they knew it, but they had a wife and five kids, I didn't. And the white trappers didn't have it and the white people came in and put steamboats to work. It was before my time because the steamboats were burning oil when I got up there. I just said, "Yeah, I can do it," and I did it. And then after 19 years I said, "Well, okay I've got this nice fish camp up here." "And I've got, oh gee whiz, I built that home cabin two or three times and I've got six line cabins, big cabins up there. What's left? What are you going to do? Are you going to just stay on here and go to the pioneer's home?" And the other thing is right in Beaver, right in town there; there was a time when... Oh gee whiz, I don't know when this was, in the middle of the '70s, "Red Power! Red Power!" These young kids were growing up and geeze by then now I'm 40 years old or something, and these kids boy I watched them when they were born or something like that, "Red Power! Red Power! Let's kill the white men!" There I was one day, they were doing that and I was walking up, I did, "How about right now." And they kept walking. But it was getting that way because there were murders there, that they would just... A little bit of this, this is homemade wine, I'm drinking homemade wine but they couldn't take it. Whatever it is about Indians, they can't take booze. I saw it, and I know it and they can't. And it would happen, it would happen very easily. Well, that 6
was part of it, and I said there's nothing more to do and things are just getting worse and worse. It was very nice in 1960 when I went there, and 19 years later it wasn't. The young men were not saying, "I can do better than my grandfather." Or, "I can do just as good as my uncle did." They didn't say that. They said, "Gee whiz, Uncle Sam's out there, he's going to take care of all of us Indians."
Mark Madison:
So where did you go after Alaska?
Jay Eisenhart:
After?
Mark Madison:
After you left Beaver? Did you come here?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, I've been here, it will be 30 years on the first of September. Yes I've been here, I came right down here.
Mark Madison:
And what did you do here in West Virginia?
Jay Eisenhart:
I said, "I'm going to do what the old-timers did, right here." The same thing I said in Alaska!
Mark Madison:
Another great frontier!
Jay Eisenhart:
And I had 2 ponies, and then I had 2 more ponies, and then I had mules. I had cornfields all up there, right up here where's he's got all of that, I plowed up all of his yard, I plowed it all up, I plowed it all up. But it was a little big different, in Beaver the Indians they said, "Yes, gee." They sort of liked it. But when I got here and started doing that stuff with the mules people laughed at me. Not in my face but they said, "Gee whiz, what kind of jerk?" I said, "Well, I'm going to do it, I don't care. Yeah, I was born in New York, well I was born in Connecticut but I claim New York..." And people can, well people can if they're raised right. And I was raised right, I had a good father and I had good aunts and uncles and I had a good mother and a good sister. And yes, people can do that, and people still do it in China and they do it in India. Africa, nope I have no use for those Africans, they can't. But you can get an Indian that just is as black as you ever saw, and he can go out there. And there are people that are doing that, and they're... Gee whiz, this is not what you want.
7
Mark Madison:
But I do have a few questions; do you have any memories from those first 4 years when you were doing the bird banding? What the techniques were like? What actually the day-to-day involved? I know it was a long time ago...
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, Cal Lensink organized the thing, and he draw out all of the Yukon Flats and he drew all of these little squares. And the first way he drew them was that there were 4-square miles, and so Jim came in the summer and all the residents were there, but they would land us out in a float plane. But 4-square miles was too much, but we did that for the first year, and then after he cut them down to 1-square, which we could cover. And so we would fly out, and sometimes there would be two of us in a square mile and sometimes there would be one in 1-square mile and the other one over 3 miles. And we would just have, well we had a rat canoe (unclear), and so this little thing where you can paddle around and portage it. You can carry it; the thing weighs 30 pounds or 35 pounds. So that's what we had, we had (unclear) and a little paper to write down on, a little coffee and a sandwich or something if you wanted it, then we'd sit around and wait. And we'd go back to Fort Yukon, that's where we worked out of, Fort Yukon. And that's what we were doing; Cal did all of the figuring out of what we saw.
Mark Madison:
Did it help stop the dam? You said at the beginning you were doing this because of the dam proposal?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, there were a lot of reasons to stop the dam; there's was a lot more than that. (Unclear) Bob Bartlett was the other one, but Groening was the one that wanted the dam and Egan was the governor. No the dam wasn't popular.
Mark Madison:
What about Roger Kaye, when you first met him he was hunting out there?
Jay Eisenhart:
I never met him.
Mark Madison:
Oh okay, but his name came up earlier in your oral history. He was there before you was he?
Jay Eisenhart:
I'm 73 years old, and not many people were there before I was, he's not one of them. No, he wrote me a letter, and somehow or other, because that letter he wrote to my sister, I have a sister in Vermont. And Ron Inouye, now does that mean anything to you?
Mark Madison:
No. 8
Jay Eisenhart:
Well he's Japanese, and he was in Fairbanks and he was one (unclear)... too long of a story. But anyways, somehow or other Roger Kaye, I don't know if he's a politician or just a writer, a newspaper writer, but he found out that Inouye knew my sister. Well anyway, he wrote a letter to my sister and she forwarded it to me, and then I found out that Roger Kaye had been out on my trap lines somehow or other.
Mark Madison:
I see, yeah, later on.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but then he ran into trouble. He was out; those Swede boys that I'd talked about, Victor Innolov, because the whole trap line was abandoned after I left my part of it. But I didn't have their home cabin, which was up above where I was, and that was abandoned. And Roger Kaye, well he landed an airplane... But anyways, he used it and he trapped, which was all right because I talked to him on the telephone and I said, "What about the Indians?" Because the Indians in Beaver, they have that whole trapping line. He said, "Well it wasn't on there." And I said, "Well yeah, okay." But anyways, he used that cabin and he left some grub there, he left some traps and stuff there. And then it turned out a couple of Indian boys from Beaver got over there and they took all his stuff from there! And then when I talked to him I said, "Well who was it?" And he said, "That was Sammy Blackitt and the other one." I didn't know who the other one was but I knew Sam Blackitt, I knew who that was, but this Indians kids. And so they went over in their snowmobiles and so they'd catch a few beavers or something, and whatever anybody leaves there they'd take it. And that's about what I know about Roger Kaye. Well he was, he was up, he'd fly a plane up there around my fourth and fifth cabin up there. That was his sheep hunting areas, he was up in those White Mountains there, he was sheep hunting. And he could see the cabin, because there's a plane... When I was there trapping (unclear) sideline because there's a couple of lakes down there that are pretty close to the mountains, and people would land there and they would set up a camp and then they'd walk up to the mountains. So he landed there and he saw my cabin and then he went over there, and I'd left a note in it and I said, "I'm quitting this trap line, I'm never coming back." And so he saw that and so then he got my name and knew who I was and all of that; there's one connection right there. He was sheep hunting, but I killed some sheep up there. From Beaver right on the Yukon River, when I went up the following year okay I'd go 19 miles downstream in a big boat which I built, I had a 35-foot boat, I traveled down with 5 dogs or 6 dogs and a corn mill and everything. I'd go 19 miles downstream and 50 miles upstream and had my own cabin, and then I had 5 cabins in a row. And it was about 40 miles from the first cabin to the second, third, fourth, fifth it was about 40 miles, so I had to go 40 miles, and I'm setting the traps, this is my business. But if I had to get up there right in the first week of November it was nice weather, and I'd say, "Well, I'm going to go off and see if I can see sheep." Because the Swede boys told me there's sheep out there and nobody in Beaver, they didn't know what sheep were, they didn't know what they were. And so I went out, after I'd been traveling for 5 years or something like that because I couldn't go all the time, sometimes it would be snowy and 9
windy and you can't get up there. I'd get there to the cabin but I couldn't get up on there. As soon as I saw one, boy there's a big ram up there! But it was in the afternoon and I couldn't get up there and said, "Well I'll go tomorrow morning." I went up there tomorrow morning, he was right there and I shot him!
Mark Madison:
He was waiting for you!
Jay Eisenhart:
And he didn't roll the other way, he didn't go towards Fairbanks, he went my way. And I got him, and oh my, that meat was just so good. This was in November, they try to hunt them in August or something when they fly in and walk in. But then I was doing it the hard way.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, in November.
Jay Eisenhart:
And I got that guy. And then... I don't know what I killed, maybe 3 or 4 in 19 years. One year I went up, well it was just a nice day, it was in January, there were a bunch of ewes and fawn kids, and I shot one of those ewes. The meat was no good at all; it was no good at all. You've got to get anything, whatever it is, a bull moose, if you kill a bull moose he's fine, if you kill him in October you don't want to eat him.
Mark Madison:
In those early days when you went up there, in the early 60's, how did the people feel about the Fish and Wildlife Service? Did they like the agency or not like it or didn't care?
Jay Eisenhart:
They were a little bit worried about me but it didn't take long, it didn't take long. I wore glasses and I was a little guy, someone called me the little schoolteacher. No, it didn't take long at all that they were perfectly reassured that I was doing just what they were doing, and we'd all talk about, you know, "Is there any rats around or...?" Gee whiz, in the first of May oh, "Who sees a goose, who's going to shoot the first goose?" Because we're all going, "We're going to be after them?" That's all there was to it. No, there was no problem there. And Jim King, they liked Jim King, he was a good guy. And a bunch of the rest of them there, they were good guys. I was up there when, well when they went up there to Point Barrow, well they went up there because everybody was shooting eider ducks and so they asked them what was all about the eiders ducks, "I don't care, what are you going to do."
Mark Madison:
What did they do?
10
Jay Eisenhart:
They had backbone; they weren't killing off the eider ducks. There were laws that were written; they're supposed to fit everybody. There's a law out there when; okay you said you came over on I-what?
Mark Madison: I-70.
Jay Eisenhart:
You came out on I-70; did you ever drive 70 miles an hour on it?
Mark Madison:
Quite a bit!
Jay Eisenhart:
When they said 65? Well, that's the way things are because you have to say, "I know what I'm doing." But you don't drive 65 miles an hour in (unclear). Well that's the same thing with any law; it's pretty hard to make one that fits everybody.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, good point, good point.
Jay Eisenhart:
But I've said it before, I didn't care about the game law, the only thing I did was beaver, when you can... There was a limit on beaver. So I didn't trap 21 when you can only check in 20 because you had to check them.
Mark Madison:
But the other stuff there was no laws on it or they just didn't check on the background?
Jay Eisenhart:
They didn't, it made no sense, it made no sense. These were people that (unclear) deer all winter long. Well the first thing was the crane, the crane came over and everybody was after them, little kids, women, everybody, I mean there's a honker, there's a honker! And after that, the same thing with the fish, now there are all kinds of laws on those salmon. Gee whiz, the Fourth of July and everybody was trying to catch a king salmon, who was going to get the first one! Now what it is you have to pull your nets out on Tuesday and Wednesday, well gee you can catch them Thursday and Friday --- some stupid stuff like that.
Mark Madison:
Well Jay, you gave us a real sense of what it was like in the old days. Is there anything, I know you said you took some notes, was there anything that you didn't get to cover that was in your notes that you want to discuss?
11
Jay Eisenhart:
Yeah, everything on here!
Mark Madison:
Well what else?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well I don't know what you want.
Mark Madison:
I just want to hear what it was like the old days and any recollections you have old.
Jay Eisenhart:
The thing I wrote on top of this is I heard of Sarah Palin the same day you did.
Mark Madison:
All right, yes.
Jay Eisenhart:
Well somebody asked me the other day, they said, "Do you know Sarah Palin?"
Mark Madison:
You were out of the state before she was probably born.
Jay Eisenhart:
No I don't know her!
Mark Madison:
What other notes do you've got jotted down there?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well maybe... Well I can't show you this but Johnny Sand now he was an Indian and, I don't know what we got talking about... make a rabbit skin blanket. And he told me... Well there were a lot of rabbits, some years there was a lot of rabbits when there's a lot of lynx and stuff. Well he taught me how to... Well, what I did, you'd get the rabbit and you'd skin them, everything comes off like a sock and then you'd cut off the back leg or something, but anyways, you'd cut one around with a sharp knife until you get a string. Do you see what I'm talking about? You'd go around and around until you hit the cranium, maybe 7 or 8 feet long, and then you'd just wrap it around a stick. And then you get another one, another one, another one and pretty soon you get your stick it's all full of them. Well then you start, well it's just like an endless chain, you do this and you pull it out and then you go back in here and you pull it out. So you get this endless chain and then you go back through every time you back through until you have something.
Mark Madison:
And that's how you make a rabbit blanket. 12
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, so I made one and then I made another one. And after awhile... You ever hear of Barnett Castle? Is she dead now?
Mark Madison:
Yes; I think she has passed on, yeah.
Jay Eisenhart:
Well she was at the University of Alaska. Geeze, I got to know these people and she'd said, "How do you make a rabbit skin blanket?" And I told her, and she said write it out, write it out on a piece of paper and so I did that. Well another time I was talking to her and I asked her, I said, "Barnett, do the moose chew cud?" And she said, "I don't know." Nobody ever saw them chew their cud. And so then I got her to (unclear).... Gee, the moose they must chew their cud. I know what's in their stomach; (unclear). Well that was something else about Barnett Castle. But anyway, when I left I had those two rabbit blankets which were 10 x 10 or something, big things like that. John Sand, he's the one who told me how to make them, he said, "Don't make them too tight, don't make like those looped things like this, think like this." And then he said how his mother or grandmother or something made him a suit when he was a little kid.
Mark Madison:
Out of rabbit?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but they'd just do these endless chains, and I didn't do it. But you could, all you have to do is weave in, you can make a little arm or a leg, it's just so rough, rough going. He said yeah, he had a little suit, boy you could picture it because there's holes, there's holes in it! Well when I'd sleep on it boy you could stick your toes right up it, there the warmest things. Well anyways, when I left I knew I had something and one of them is in Fairbanks in the university there and the other one is in Juneau, and I sold one of them for $900.00 and other one for $1000.00, and I wrote that thing. But people won't do that, and here I'm this white guy going gee whiz, I came from Albany, New York.
Mark Madison:
And you're making a rabbit blanket.
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, but I was doing what French Jim did and Ed Berg and all of those white men, they came up and did that. But now I couldn't do that anymore. When that land claims, Native Land Claims Settlement Act came out, and I was on Beaver's property when they had (unclear)... and I could have stayed there but the time where it had just run out, there wasn't any good anymore. And I was 45 years old and said, "Well gee whiz, 45 that's just like 25." It was not like 73, no not anymore! No, I'm not doing anymore.
13
Jay Eisenhart:
Well you can walk around in the house; well you can't take pictures.... I don't care you can or not but...
Mark Madison:
Do you want me to? Is it okay if I take pictures?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes, if you arrange it.
Tour of house...
Mark Madison:
Let me zoom on this, so this made out of a sheep horn?
Jay Eisenhart:
Yes.
Mark Madison:
Wow! It looks like a big sheep, was it a decent sized one?
Jay Eisenhart:
It's supposed to be a 3/4 horn but it was 3/4, but I don't care!
Mark Madison:
Was it hard to carve?
Jay Eisenhart:
Well, you had to start out with a hatchet and start chopping, but then you keep putting in boiling water, you keep putting into boiling water and then you can carve a little bit. Well this is the tip of the horn and this is the big part of it, but it's all carved out so it's this way, and this is all down here. And then (unclear) after you get it all made, you get it all made, you turn it inside out. Right on your knees, well it goes this way but you turn it outside out. It's all soft; every time you put it in boiling water it's soft. And so I made it.
Mark Madison:
Yeah, that is neat.
Jay Eisenhart:
When I made the arm, it was old Ida En was over there, she was an Eskimo, she wanted it so bad! I said I may wait another year, I'll make another one, I'll make another one. But they didn't do that stuff, they won't do that, and it's just white men.
Jay Eisenhart:
Have you seen a moose skin; well it's like (unclear), you can chop them down the middle and there you've got that, that's hard as a rock and that what you clean the moose skin, 14
clean a mink or anything else. That and a crooked knife, and you can't exist up there without a crooked knife. This is what you carve stuff with, a little (unclear), making canoe panel, and oh I've got a canoe panel but you ain't going to see it! And this one, people always used to make it out of wood. And I said, "I'm going to..." This is the same thing as this one.
Mark Madison:
What's this?
Jay Eisenhart:
That's bone, that's bone. Now that takes a little bit of drilling and a little bit of carving, a little bit of time and a little bit of.... I hate to keep saying it, but white man!
Mark Madison:
That is neat.
Mark Madison:
That's for mending a net; do you know what I'm talking about?
Mark Madison:
Yep, yep, that's really interesting. That's great stuff!
Unverified: Mill (High School) (pg 1); Victor Innolov (pg 8); Sammy Blackitt (pg 8); John Sand (pg 11), Barnett Castle (pg 11), Ida En (pg 13)
Key Words: Jay Eisenhart, Mark Madison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Alaska, 1960 Rampart Dam Study, Senator Gruening, Yukon River, Yukon Flats, Jim King, Cal Lensink, trapping, Beaver, AK, Roger Kaye, Mount Schwatka, White Mountains, Victoria Mountains, Moses Cruickshank, Fort Yukon, Bob Bartlett, Governor Bill Egan, Ronald Inouye, eider duck, Native Land Claims Settlement Act,